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Elections, Ideology, And Turnover In The U.S. Federal Government, Alexander D. Bolton, John De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis Jan 2016

Elections, Ideology, And Turnover In The U.S. Federal Government, Alexander D. Bolton, John De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis

Faculty Scholarship

A defining feature of public sector employment is the regular change in elected leadership. Yet, we know little about how elections influence public sector careers. We describe how elections alter policy outputs and disrupt the influence of civil servants over agency decisions. These changes shape the career choices of employees motivated by policy, influence, and wages. Using new Office of Personnel Management data on the careers of millions of federal employees between 1988 and 2011, we evaluate how elections influence employee turnover decisions. We find that presidential elections increase departure rates of career senior employees, particularly in agencies with divergent …


Quitting In Protest: A Theory Of Presidential Policy Making And Agency Response, Charles M. Cameron, John M. De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis Jan 2015

Quitting In Protest: A Theory Of Presidential Policy Making And Agency Response, Charles M. Cameron, John M. De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the effects of centralized presidential policy-making, implemented through unilateral executive action, on the willingness of bureaucrats to exert effort and stay in the government. Extending models in organizational economics, we show that policy initiative by the president is a substitute for initiative by civil servants. Yet, total effort is enhanced when both work. Presidential centralization of policy often impels policy-oriented bureaucrats ("zealots") to quit rather than implement presidential policies they dislike. Those most likely to quit are a range of moderate bureaucrats. More extreme bureaucrats may be willing to wait out an opposition president in the hope …


The Mirage Of Non-State Governance, Ralf Michaels Jan 2010

The Mirage Of Non-State Governance, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I offer three theses, all of which are critical. First, non‑state governance is conceptually unattractive; it is a concept that makes little sense. Second, non‑state governance is empirically unattractive; meaningful non‑state governance rarely exists. Third, meaningful non‑state governance is normatively unattractive; we would rarely want it, and people postulating it usually expect the state to play an important role. However, I also have something constructive: a proposed trajectory. Talk about the state and the non‑state can only be an intermediary stage in a trajectory of a theory of governance that might lead to a new paradigm of …


The Forgotten Freedom Of Assembly, John D. Inazu Jan 2010

The Forgotten Freedom Of Assembly, John D. Inazu

Faculty Scholarship

The freedom of assembly has been at the heart of some of the most important social movements in American history: antebellum abolitionism, women's suffrage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the labor movement in the Progressive Era and after the New Deal, and the civil rights movement. Claims of assembly stood against the ideological tyranny that exploded during the first Red Scare in the years surrounding the First World War and the second Red Scare of 1950s McCarthyism. Abraham Lincoln once called 'the right of the people peaceably to assemble' part of 'the Constitutional substitute for revolution'. In 1939, the …


Public Choice And Environmental Policy: A Review Of The Literature, Christopher H. Schroeder Jan 2010

Public Choice And Environmental Policy: A Review Of The Literature, Christopher H. Schroeder

Faculty Scholarship

This paper is a draft of a chapter for a forthcoming book, Research Handbook in Public Law and Public Choice, edited by Daniel Farber and Anne Joseph O'Connell, to be published by Elgar. It reviews the public choice literature on environmental policy making, first generally and then with respect to four fundamental environmental policy questions: (1) whether or not government action is warranted; (2) if it is, the scope and stringency of the government action, including the manner in which a bureaucracy will implement and enforce any statutory standards; (3) the level of government that assumes responsibility; and (4) the …


The Strange Origins Of The Constitutional Right Of Association, John D. Inazu Jan 2010

The Strange Origins Of The Constitutional Right Of Association, John D. Inazu

Faculty Scholarship

Although much has been written about the freedom of association and its ongoing importance to American constitutionalism, much recent scholarship mistakenly relies on a truncated history that begins with Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984), the case that divided constitutional association into intimate and expressive components. Roberts’s doctrinal framework has been rightly criticized. However, neither the right of association nor all of its doctrinal problems start there. The Supreme Court’s foray into the constitutional right of association began a generation earlier with NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958). This article offers a new …


The Rule Of Law Unplugged, Daniel B. Rodriguez, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Barry R. Weingast Jan 2010

The Rule Of Law Unplugged, Daniel B. Rodriguez, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Barry R. Weingast

Faculty Scholarship

The "Rule of Law" is a venerable concept, but, on closer inspection, it is a complex admixture of positive assumptions, inchoate political and legal theory, and occasionally wishful thinking. Although enormous investments have been made in rule of law reformism throughout the world, advocates of transplanting American-style legal and political institutions to developed and developing countries are often unclear about what they are transplanting and why they are doing so. The concept of rule of law has become unplugged from theories of law. Scholars clearly have more work to do in understanding the rule of law and designing institutions to …


Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez Jan 2008

Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Foreword: Making Sense Of Information For Environmental Protection, James Salzman, Douglas A. Kysar Jan 2008

Foreword: Making Sense Of Information For Environmental Protection, James Salzman, Douglas A. Kysar

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the ubiquity of information, no one has proposed calling the present era the Knowledge Age. Knowledge depends not only on access to reliable information, but also on sound judgment regarding which information to access and how to situate that information in relation to the values and purposes that comprise the individual's or the social group's larger projects. This is certainly the case for wise and effective environmental governance. A regulator needs accurate information to understand the nature of a problem and the consequences of potential responses. Likewise, the regulated community needs information to decide how best to comply with …


Fixing Innovation Policy: A Structural Perspective, Stuart M. Benjamin, Arti K. Rai Jan 2008

Fixing Innovation Policy: A Structural Perspective, Stuart M. Benjamin, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

Innovation is central to economic growth and human welfare. Government officials and commentators have recognized this reality and have called for a variety of different substantive incentives for stimulating innovation. But the question of how an innovation regulator should be structured has received little attention. Such consideration is important not only because of the significance of innovation but also because current government innovation policy is so haphazard. There is no government entity that looks at innovation broadly, and the narrower agencies that regulate aspects of innovation policy not only fail to pay systematic attention to innovation goals but often act …


Mandatory Constitutions, Paul D. Carrington Jan 2007

Mandatory Constitutions, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Agenda Control In The Bundestag, 1980-2002, William M. Chandler, Gary W. Cox, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2006

Agenda Control In The Bundestag, 1980-2002, William M. Chandler, Gary W. Cox, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We find strong evidence of monopoly legislative agenda control by government parties in the Bundestag. First, the government parties have near-zero roll rates, while the opposition parties are often rolled over half the time. Second, only opposition parties’ (and not government parties’) roll rates increase with the distances of each party from the floor median. Third, almost all policy moves are towards the government coalition (the only exceptions occur during periods of divided government). Fourth, roll rates for government parties sky- rocket when they fall into the opposition and roll rates for opposition parties plummet when they enter government, while …


The Complex Links Between Governance And Biodiversity, C. Barrett, C. Gibson, B. Hoffman, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2006

The Complex Links Between Governance And Biodiversity, C. Barrett, C. Gibson, B. Hoffman, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We argue that two problems weaken the claims of those who link corruption and the exploitation of natural resources. The first is conceptual. Studies that use national level indicators of corruption fail to note that corruption comes in many forms, at multiple levels, and may or may not affect resource use. Without a clear causal model of the mechanism by which corruption affects resources, one should treat with caution any estimated relationship between corruption and the state of natural resources. The second problem is methodological: Simple models linking corruption measures and natural resource use typically do not account for other …


Canonical Construction And Statutory Revisionism: The Strange Case Of The Appropriations Canon, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez Jan 2005

Canonical Construction And Statutory Revisionism: The Strange Case Of The Appropriations Canon, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Law, Politics, And Judicial Review: A Comment On Hasen, Guy-Uriel Charles Jan 2004

Law, Politics, And Judicial Review: A Comment On Hasen, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Abdication Or Delegation? Congress, The Bureaucracy, And The Delegation Dilemma, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 1999

Abdication Or Delegation? Congress, The Bureaucracy, And The Delegation Dilemma, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


As A Matter Of Factions: The Budgetary Implications Of Shifting Factional Control In Japan’S Ldp, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies Jan 1997

As A Matter Of Factions: The Budgetary Implications Of Shifting Factional Control In Japan’S Ldp, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies

Faculty Scholarship

For 38 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maintained single-party control over the Japanese government. This lack of partisan turnover in government has frustrated attempts to explain Japanese government policy changes using political variables. In this paper, we look for intraparty changes that may have led to changes in Japanese budgetary policy. Using a simple model of agenda-setting, we hypothesize that changes in which intraparty factions “control” the LDP affect the party’s decisions over spending priorities systematically. This runs contrary to the received wisdom in the voluminous literature on LDP factions, which asserts that factions, whatever their raison d’être, do …


Rationality And The Foundations Of Positive Political Theory, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies Jan 1996

Rationality And The Foundations Of Positive Political Theory, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we discuss and debunk the four most common critiques of the rational choice research program (which we prefer to call Positive Political Theory) by explaining and advocating its foundations: the rationality assumption, component analysis (abstraction), strategic behavior, and theory building, in turn. We argue that the rationality assumption and component analysis, properly understood, can be seen to underlie all social science, despite the protestations of critics. We then discuss the two ways that PPT most clearly contributes to political science (i.e., what distinguishes it from other research programs), namely the introduction of strategic behavior (people do not …


Politcs And The Courts: A Positive Theory Of Judicial Doctrine And The Rule Of Law, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger G. Noll, Barry R. Weingast Jan 1995

Politcs And The Courts: A Positive Theory Of Judicial Doctrine And The Rule Of Law, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger G. Noll, Barry R. Weingast

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Legal Realism And The Social Contract: Fuller’S Public Jurisprudence Of Form, Private Jurisprudence Of Substance, James Boyle Jan 1993

Legal Realism And The Social Contract: Fuller’S Public Jurisprudence Of Form, Private Jurisprudence Of Substance, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Positive Canons: The Role Of Legislative Bargains In Statutory Interpretation, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger G. Noll, Barry R. Weingast Jan 1992

Positive Canons: The Role Of Legislative Bargains In Statutory Interpretation, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger G. Noll, Barry R. Weingast

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


‘The State’ And Other Basic Terms In Public Law, Lawrence G. Baxter Jan 1982

‘The State’ And Other Basic Terms In Public Law, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.